Jean-Charles de Castelbajac on Channeling ‘Joy and Hope’ With His Designs for the Notre-Dame de Paris Reopening

PARIS – “It’s a renaissance,” Jean-Charles de Castelbajac said of his latest project.

The 74-year-old designer was referring not to himself, though he’s had more fashion lives than the proverbial cat. Rather, he was talking about his latest mission: creating the clerical outfits for the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral on Dec. 7 and 8, following a devastating fire in 2019.

Best known for signature designs like his teddy bear coat and Iceberg cartoon sweaters, prized by the hip-hop set, de Castelbajac worked hand in hand with Le19M, the Chanel-owned craftsmanship hub in Paris, on the designs that blend religious symbols with streetwear-inspired techniques.

“It’s like a cathedral of know-how at the service of Notre-Dame,” he told WWD. “I wanted to speak to younger generations with a desire for purity and to simplify what an ornament is.”

Embroiderers Lesage and Montex, goldsmith Goossens, milliner Maison Michel and grand flou atelier Paloma worked on the 2,000 chasubles, dalmatics (a liturgical tunic) and stoles that will be worn by 700 clergy members at the reopening ceremony and then at major celebrations at the church.

The creations mix traditional embroidery techniques with flocking, typically used for varsity sweatshirts; sublimation, a heat transfer printing technique commonly seen on T-shirts, and quilting.

“I wanted to achieve a kind of purity that was both medieval and futuristic,” de Castelbajac explained. “The idea was to help create the clerical clothes of the future.”

The designer was chosen by Monseigneur Laurent Ulrich, the Archbishop of Paris, to design the ceremonial garb thanks to a longstanding association with the Catholic Church. Together with the maisons d’art, he joined “L’Atelier de Notre-Dame,” a group of artists and craftspeople selected by the Diocese of Paris to work on the restoration.

“It’s five years of tireless work,” he said, noting that artisans from across the world came together to rebuild the famed landmark. “It’s like when there are Lego pieces everywhere and suddenly they come together and form a building – so little by little, there is this kind of magic.”

An aristocratic lineage

The designer, part of a generation that revolutionized French fashion by ushering in ready-to-wear in the 1970s, has always been an outlier – a rebel who is also part of the establishment.

A contemporary of Jean Paul Gaultier, Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler and Kenzo Takada, he was close to fellow designers such as Vivienne Westwood, punk musicians like the Sex Pistols, and artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

But he also carries the title of Marquis de Castelbajac, with an aristocratic lineage that is said to stretch back to the Crusades.

“Our family coat of arms is a cross with three fleur-de-lys, so there is this inherent tradition of serving the church,” he said, noting that his late cousin Claire de Castelbajac, who died at the age of 21, is considered a candidate for sainthood.

His first project for the church in 1992 involved designing vestments for priests celebrating mass in prison. Five years later, he created rainbow-bedecked outfits for 500 bishops, 5,000 priests and a million young people attending the World Youth Days celebration in Paris, from T-shirts to the chasuble worn by Pope John Paul II.

“The first time was in the dark intimacy of a prison. The second time it was like a festival,” he said. “Here, it’s about the history of France. It’s part of a longer journey.”

The designer has a natural inclination for the mystical. After all, Paris is dotted with his chalk drawings of angels, one of which – inside Gare du Nord – has survived intact since 1996. Recently, the city commissioned him to create a 56-foot-high angel made of trellis wood, which towers on a wall over Boulevard Saint-Germain.  

His 1997 design for the pope, made with Lesage and Maison Michel, marked the first time an artist or fashion designer had collaborated with the Vatican – but de Castelbajac said he would have taken the assignment even if he were an atheist.

“It only became about faith afterwards. Initially, what interested me was the challenge of bringing creativity to the institution,” he said.

In the following years, De Castelbajac would sometimes take his nephews to see the pope’s vestment at Notre-Dame, where it was displayed next to the crown of thorns, said to be a relic of Christ’s crucifixion. “It was saved by a fireman during the fire and it will return to the treasury,” he said.

Rays of hope

The Notre-Dame commission came at a time when he was exploring a new technique, collage, which became the foundation for his designs.

One of them combines a gold cross with an explosion of fragments in primary colors. The central motif was inspired by the gold altar cross, designed by Marc Couturier, which emerged intact from the blaze, while the vibrant hues nod to the cathedral’s stained glass windows and jeweled reliquary.

“I reprised Marc Couturier’s cross and I added the rays, reminiscent of Keith Haring’s ‘Radiant Baby.’ They are rays of joy and hope, something that tells young generations: ‘Don’t be afraid,’” he said.

The colored elements represent diversity. “None of them is similar. Everything is irregular, and everything is speaking about sharing: sharing emotion, sharing sympathy, sharing empathy,” de Castelbajac explained.

The robes, made from Scottish white broadcloth, were assembled by Paloma.

Lesage created the embroidery for the tricolor cope, with crosses embroidered using a traditional crochet technique, enriched with glass tubes and angel hair, and enhanced with gold leaf and quilting. For the chasubles and the archbishop’s miter, it added radiant gold leaf using the sublimation technique, producing a light, flexible metallic surface.

“We used three layers to achieve a deep gold that catches the light, so we experimented. The workshops had never done that, but they went for it. I think they really challenged themselves, because I didn’t want to draw angels, I didn’t want it to be ornamental – I wanted it to be pure,” de Castelbajac recalled.

For the archbishop’s chasuble, Montex embroidered the crosses with 18,000 gold sequins and flocked outlines.  

Artisans at Goossens produced hammered and gold-plated metal versions of his Christogram design, in the form of a Chi-Rho symbol, to be used as clasps for the copes. Meanwhile, Maison Michel fashioned the miters out of ivory Mikado silk, reinforced with flexible sheets of mica and embellished with gold flocking by Lesage.

De Castelbajac, who began his career by making clothes out of mops, blankets and medical bandages, said he hoped the designs would appeal to the masses.

“I’ve always liked the idea of ​​democratic clothing. When I did Iceberg, it became the emblem of hip hop. When I designed clothes for Farrah Fawcett Majors, I democratized the sweatshirt in America. I really helped to popularize sportswear,” he said.

His designs continue to radiate across disciplines, with recent projects including a collaboration with Vetements on an updated version of his teddy bear coat; a limited-edition watch with MB&F, and an immersive installation at London restaurant Sketch celebrating the spirit of the Suffragettes.  

Although Pope Francis won’t be attending, de Castelbajac is looking forward to seeing his designs come together at the Notre-Dame reopening ceremony.

“What’s going to be really beautiful is that the chromatic order is the same for the archbishop, the bishops, the priests, the deacons and the canons, but with different rhythms, so I’m really impatient to see them all together,” he said.